


Double Trouble

by RetroactiveCon



Series: A Game of Spot the Difference [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Anal Sex, Doppelcest, First Time, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Oral Sex, Past Hartley Rathaway/Eobard Thawne | Harrison Wells
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:53:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21721768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RetroactiveCon/pseuds/RetroactiveCon
Summary: “What are you more panicked about?” he asks drily. “That you kissed a man and liked it, or that you kissed your alternate-universe doppelgänger and liked it?”
Relationships: Hartley Rathaway/Earth-2 Hartley Rathaway
Series: A Game of Spot the Difference [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571338
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Double Trouble

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if anyone is going to want this fic, but here it is anyway.

Hartley has a hypothesis about breaches and sound waves. It isn’t easy to test with the others around (particularly Harry, who is difficult to work with in more ways than one), so he’s stayed late at the lab to work alone. His first foray into sonically opening a breach goes poorly, as do the three subsequent tries. On the fifth attempt, a breach opens. Much to his astonishment, it spills out a slender boy who falls to the floor, catches himself on his hands, and panics. 

“Where am I? What happened?”

Hartley steps closer. This must be someone from Earth-2—so many people have come and gone between their worlds that he isn't surprised someone fell through by accident. He prepares a pretty lie about a meta with teleportation ability and a promise to return this poor person to their correct time and place. As soon as he sees the boy’s face, the words die in his throat. 

“Oh no.” 

Earth-2 Hartley Rathaway stares up at him, wide-eyed and confused. “Who are…who are you? Are you…” He peers closer. “Me?”

Hartley holds out a hand. He’s heard about Barry’s experiences with his Earth-2 counterpart and doubts anything terrible will come of touching this other Hartley. “Yes,” he says. “This is going to take some explaining.”

“No…no it won’t.” Other Hartley stares around the room. No doubt it’s odd (or possibly narcissistic) to find him adorable, but his intent expression reminds Hartley less of himself and more of this Earth’s Barry, whose single-minded focus is endearing and unquestionably attractive. “This is an alternate universe, isn’t it?” 

“Yes,” Hartley agrees. 

His doppelgänger clasps his hand and allows him to pull him to his feet. Being eye to eye with a mirror version of himself is strange, although the closer he looks, the more differences he notices, like some kind of child’s puzzle. The other Hartley wears simple black frames rather than tortoiseshell. His eyes never leave Hartley’s face, as though he’s watching for a reaction. That, combined with the uneasy way he holds himself, gives Hartley an unpleasant suspicion about his doppelgänger’s life. 

“Where am I?”

“You’re in STAR Labs.” Hartley tilts his head. “Does it look that different on your Earth?”

His doppelgänger ducks his head. “I…I don’t know. I’m sorry. I haven’t been to STAR Labs. Well, once or twice for fundraisers, but I was never allowed anywhere that looked like this. Sorry, I’m sorry.” 

Hartley’s stomach twists. This other version of him never worked at STAR Labs, which means that his terrified attention to Hartley’s expression isn’t a habit left over from a questionable relationship with its head scientist. (Having met that universe’s Harrison Wells, who was not replaced by a power-mad speedster from the future, makes the possibility even more remote. Harry, while callous, isn’t willfully cruel.) “If you don’t work at STAR Labs, what do you do?”

His doppelgänger’s eyes widen. “I work at Rathaway Industries, of course. Don’t you? Why, why wouldn’t…” A pale reflection of his earlier alarm finds its way back to his eyes. “Why don’t you?”

“My father couldn’t find a place in his heart, his home, or his company for a gay heir.” He doesn’t bother gentling his tone or his sentiment. The half-formed picture of his doppelgänger’s life becomes clear. He’s skittish because he’s still under Osgood Rathaway’s thumb. 

The other Hartley makes a soft, shocked sound, like the beginning of a sob. One slender hand splays on his thigh and rubs back and forth. “No, no,” he whispers. “Multiverse. Nothing is the same here.”

Hartley stares blankly at him. “Oh,” he realizes. “You’re not just keeping secrets from him. You’re not even willing to admit it to yourself.”

“There’s nothing to admit.” His doppelgänger nods once, his expression trying too hard to be resolute. He resembles nothing so much as a scared schoolboy, and Hartley is seized by an odd, protective pang. He’d thought the same once, although he hadn’t lied to himself for nearly as long as his doppelgänger appears to have done. “I’m not gay. You are, but that doesn’t mean I am. We may look the same, but an infinite number of universes means an infinite number of possibilities, means that statistically, yes, some versions of us are gay, but some of us aren’t, and I’m not.” 

Hartley raises an eyebrow. He truly cannot imagine a universe in which he could be straight. (Of course, he also couldn’t imagine a universe with an evil Cisco, but he’s heard the harrowing tales of Reverb. Perhaps his doppelgänger has a point.) “I don’t think it works like that.” 

“You’re a scientist,” his doppelgänger chides him. “You want to just defy statistics and…”

Impulsively, Hartley pulls him into a kiss. Their glasses clack together, an amusing start to what becomes a deep, thorough kiss. The other Hartley makes a sweet, startled noise and opens up. When they part, he stands motionless, his mouth slack and his eyes closed as though he can’t quite process what happened. Hartley opens his mouth to say something when his eyes open and he jumps back. “Oh God!” 

“What are you more panicked about?” he asks drily. “That you kissed a man and liked it, or that you kissed your alternate-universe doppelgänger and liked it?”

“Either! Both! Both is good!” His doppelgänger skitters away from him. “I’m you—you’re me—we can’t, we mustn’t, it’s wrong and anyway you ought to hate me, if you’re me, because I do and it should translate…”

Hartley catches his hand before it can press against his thigh. (He gets the sinking feeling he knows why his doppelgänger keeps rubbing his thighs. Selfishly, he wants to delay confirming his hypothesis for as long as he can.) “Hate you?” he asks. “No. If you were more like me, maybe, but you aren’t.”

His doppelgänger ventures, “Because I’m a coward?” 

Hartley shakes his head. “No. You’re…” He was going to say ‘sweet,’ but that’s not quite right. “Innocent,” he realizes. “That’s something I haven’t been in a long time.” 

For the first time, his doppelgänger looks at him with something other than fear. “What happened to you?” 

He shrugs. He’s never told anyone the full extent of what faux-Wells did to him, and were he willing to try, this innocent version of himself is the last person he’d tell. “I fell in love with a man who used me and threw me away.”

His doppelgänger’s eyes widen. “Is that why your father threw you out?”

“No. I came out to him after my first year of college—that was when he threw me out. I’d been out on the streets for a year by the time I met this man. He offered me a job at STAR Labs—my dream come true.” Hartley laughs. There are times he thinks he deserved what faux-Wells did to him; if he hadn’t been so naïve, he might have avoided the entire thing. “I would have done anything to please him.”

His doppelgänger looks down at the ground, his glasses slipping down his nose. “Another reason not to fall in love, I guess.” 

Hartley thought that, too, once. After escaping faux-Wells, he’d sworn never to allow anyone else to get close enough to hurt him. For a year, he’d kept his promise. Then, with Barry Allen’s help, he’d quickly and gleefully broken it. “No, not at all. I wouldn’t wish what happened to me on my worst enemy, but don’t use it as an excuse to continue lying to your father. I know it’s scary—I lived through it, it was terrifying. But at some point, you have to stop living safely and start living authentically, or you’ll regret what might have been.”

“You’re what might have been,” his doppelgänger points out. 

Unfortunately, that’s true. Hartley laughs. “I’m the pinnacle of well-adjusted. I tried to blow up my manipulative ex and I just gave my alternate-universe counterpart his first kiss.”

His doppelgänger gives him a contemplative look. Hartley recognizes the little glint in his eyes a heartbeat before he presses their lips together. It isn’t a particularly deep kiss; it’s quick and chaste and almost sweet, the sort of kiss Hartley remembers giving faux-Wells. He refuses to take that role, even with a duplicate of himself. 

“What are you hoping will come of this?” He takes off his glasses, folds them, and sets them aside. Without them, his doppelgänger is a vague, person-shaped blur. 

“I want to know what I’m missing.” His voice is hesitant and tinged with desperation. “Who better to show me than me?” 

Hartley smirks at that. “I think, since you put it that way, this is technically masturbation.”

His doppelgänger blushes as brightly as Barry sometimes does. Hartley silences any awkward protests with a kiss. His hands skim over his doppelgänger’s chest, undoing buttons and pushing away stiff fabric. In return, his doppelgänger fumbles with his shirt. His clumsy motions slow to a halt when his fingertips brush against Hartley’s bare skin. 

“It’s all right,” Hartley murmurs against his lips. “Take your time.”

His doppelgänger seems content to slip his hands under Hartley’s loose shirt and simply explore. It’s sweet, but there’s an edge of urgency to it. Hartley is going to tell him that it’s all right, that they can go as slow as he needs, but instinct stops him. This isn’t the fumbling insistence of someone trying to push for a pace they can’t handle; it’s an all-too-recognizable craving for warmth. He’s touch-starved, the same way Hartley had been when he first met faux-Wells. 

“I know.” He whispers reassurance against the pale skin of his doppelgänger’s throat. “I know, shh.”

Pushing down his doppelgänger’s trousers reveals precisely what Hartley feared: neat rows of lines cut into his skin, shading from white to pink to red. The lowest cuts, which sit about a third of the way down his thighs, look only a few days old.

“This is why you can’t stay hidden.” Hartley skims a thumb over the uppermost scar, a raised pearly-pink line on his doppelgänger’s skin. “There are people who can accept staying closeted, but we’re not one of them. It’s only going to get worse.”

“I know,” his doppelgänger admits, “but I’m afraid.” 

“You should be,” Hartley agrees. He sinks to his knees, trailing kisses over his doppelgänger’s chest and stomach, along the jutting lines of his hipbones, and across the rows of scars. “But don’t let it stop you. We’re stronger than you think.” 

His doppelgänger makes the sweetest noises when Hartley gets his mouth on him. He teases him a bit—little kitten licks, wet kisses along the shaft, taking just the tip between his lips—before sitting forward and sucking in earnest. When he does, his doppelgänger yelps and grabs handfuls of Hartley’s hair. He moans aloud and bobs his head. There may not be a way for him to show his doppelgänger how much they like to have their hair pulled—he wants to be gentle, and that usually fits best with rough play. If he finds a way to incorporate it, though, he certainly will. 

He sucks until his doppelgänger is on the verge of coming; then he pulls off, eliciting a desperate whine. “You’ll thank me in a minute,” he promises. 

There’s no scientific purpose for the lube he keeps tucked in his pocket, unless testing Barry’s endurance counts as scientific. (It doesn’t, a point Cisco has made perfectly and repeatedly clear.) If he knows himself, his doppelgänger would probably ask about it were he not dazed by pleasure. Because he knows what it’s like not to be warned, he says, “This might be cold.”

If it is, his doppelgänger seems not to notice, although he tenses up instinctively when Hartley slips a finger inside him. Hartley soothes, “It’s all right. It feels strange at first, but it gets better.” 

Within minutes, his doppelgänger is whining and fucking himself on Hartley’s fingers. Hartley considers letting him come like this, or possibly dropping back down to his knees and letting him finish in his mouth, but he promised to show his doppelgänger as much as possible. 

His doppelgänger whimpers and hitches his hips when Hartley eases his fingers out of him. Hartley soothes him by pressing a kiss to his shoulder. “Not for long, not for long.”

Because he doubts his inexperienced double will be able to keep his footing even with a wall to lean on, he lowers them both to the floor. It would be more comfortable for both of them with his doppelgänger face-down, but Hartley wants him to be able to see his face. (That had been crucial for him the first time faux-Wells fucked him. He’s not about to deprive the other Hartley of that reassurance.) 

“Relax,” he soothes. “I want this to be good for you.”

Being inside his doppelgänger is underwhelming, if he’s honest with himself. He’s gotten used to Barry, who generates more heat than most people. That’s not to say it isn’t pleasurable; it is, and not only for him. His doppelgänger is uncertain at first, but as soon as Hartley begins to move, he moans and begs for deeper-harder-more. Hartley obliges, changing the angle until his doppelgänger gives a shocked yelp. 

It’s a shift in the pitch of his doppelgänger’s moans that warns him he’s about to come. He fucks him through his orgasm but doesn’t allow himself to come. This isn’t about him; this is about the other Hartley.

“Oh God.” His doppelgänger’s eyes flutter open, unfocused and dark. Hartley kisses him, chaste in comparison to some of the other kisses they shared. 

“I fucked me almost speechless. That’s not something many people can say.”

The other Hartley giggles, breathless and dazed. “What did you say? It’s technically masturbation?”

“Mhmm,” Hartley hums. “I know exactly how to take me apart.” 

His doppelgänger nuzzles against his jaw. He doesn’t want a kiss; he just wants touched. Hartley pets his hair, giving him time to catch his breath. 

“We’ll have to send you home soon.” He tugs ever-so-gently on his doppelgänger’s messy hair. His doppelgänger hums low in his throat and tilts his head back. “If I know our father, he’ll start to wonder where you’ve gone, if he hasn’t already.” 

“I don’t want to go.” His doppelgänger peers up at him, the familiar lines of his face blurry without his glasses on. “Could I stay here? Just…drop off the face of my Earth and start a new life on yours?”

Hartley shakes his head. “I don’t know if that’s wise. Anyway, you owe it to Jerrie to at least say goodbye.”

His doppelgänger nods. “I knew you’d say that, but I hoped…” He brushes reverent fingertips over Hartley’s cheek. “Thank you. You’re the braver version of me, that much is clear.”

“Not braver, just rash.” Hartley gets to his feet and helps his doppelgänger stand. “And look where it got me. There’s no shame in waiting until you feel safe.” 

They clamber back into their clothes. The other Hartley may not know about STARLabs’ cameras, but Hartley feels their electronic eyes on him with every movement. If he tries to erase the footage, he’ll draw not only Cisco’s ire but his attention. It’s probably best to leave whatever the cameras have seen, hope nobody finds it, and work on a frequency to disable them for the next time. 

This time, he knows the frequency and intensity to use to open another breach. Whether it will send his doppelgänger to the right place, he can only hope. 

“Oh!” The other Hartley gasps when the breach opens in front of him. “That’s spectacular! You did that entirely through sound?” 

Hartley tries not to seem overly pleased when he pronounces, “I keep telling my colleagues, there’s very little sound can’t accomplish. It’s a worthwhile field to pursue…somewhere other than Rathaway Industries.”

“Like STAR Labs?” To his surprise, his doppelgänger looks almost sly. Hartley doesn’t understand his intentions, so he says, 

“I suspect that was your dream for as long as it was mine.”

The other Hartley nods. Then he glances back at the breach and visibly steels himself, shoulders drawing up and jaw clenching tight. “Here goes.” 

Hartley sees the moment doubt catches up to him—the slight shake of his shoulders, the minute bow of his head. He sends him off with a final, “Know that you’ll always believe in yourself!” that earns him a tense laugh. Then the breach snaps closed and he’s alone.


End file.
